Caught
by nonsequiturvy
Summary: He'd come to the castle to rescue his friend, nothing more, but his heart has other plans when he meets the Evil Queen, and the feeling she stirs within it is one he won't soon forget.


The moonlight casts a tender glow as he shimmies up the castle trellis, with Little John bringing up the rear. (_This is a bad idea, Robin_, his heavyset companion huffs and puffs between breaks to wipe the sweat off his bushy brow, _a very bad idea_, and _What makes you think the Evil Queen won__'__t scorch you alive the moment she sees us?_)

But perhaps he is counting on it, because he believes he has an offer she can't refuse.

_I have something you want_ are the words on his tongue when she's discovered him in her bedchambers with his hands in the air (and he'd never known how it felt to be the one hunted until now, for a nasty sheriff is no Evil Queen), but they still there at the sight of her, a vision in red; and yes he has heard the rumors, _as beautiful as she is deadly_, but they have ill-prepared him for the fact that her beauty is what's deadly to him, not the magical powers or the heart as black as night that she is known throughout her kingdom to possess.

He'd half-expected to be charred to a crisp by now, but she seems to find him intriguing, if not reluctantly so, this man who's seen fit to waltz to his doom. _An eye for an eye?_ she questions, amused as he finally offers a trade, and he sees the mild curiosity in the hooded, mysterious depths of her gaze. She must be under the impression that he's here to beg for her mercy, revive a loved one he's lost—or better yet, to seek his revenge, because she's the reason behind the ruin of his happiness, perhaps the death of a wife (and there have been so many who have suffered such a fate at her hands). She smirks, looks bored, thinks she has him all figured out; but before she can dismiss him, declare him no longer in need of his head, she falters when he replies, _No, your majesty—an archer for a huntsman, not an eye for an eye_.

And then she's covering up her surprise with a mocking laugh, an incredulous, _And what makes you think that that__'__s a fair trade?_ He doesn't reply, only lifts up the sleeve covering his forearm instead, and suddenly she's rearing back as though she's been burned, by the crest of the lion carved into his skin. It's as dark as her eyes as they regard him now, eyes that are filled with—is that _fear_? Her whole body trembles, from the elegant coif of her hair down to the heeled tips of her toes, and this is not the response he'd been promised by the peddler in the woods, the young blonde woman dressed in brown and green rags, with all her talk of prophecies and a fate not only meant to be his.

But it hadn't been his own fate that concerned him, nor that of the Evil Queen's; he'd come to the castle to rescue his friend, nothing more, and it's a mission that seems destined to fail now that the leverage he thought he'd had is backfiring in his face. _What about this upsets you?_ he genuinely wants to know, but she's muttering something under her breath, something about an imp, surely this must be his doing, to torture her as he is doing now. And she looks furious at the thought, yet hopeless all the same, as though he has cursed her, will be the cause of her undoing. Robin shakes his head, bewildered, for her words are no longer those of a villainous monarch, but those of a woman, a woman with a heart maybe not quite so black as it seems; and she is all the more stunning to him now that he knows she has a guard to let down, and he has seen how fragile she is underneath.

The Queen, the famed Evil Queen, has backed herself into a corner, can't even look him in the eye; she's grimacing as though on the verge of being ill, like the very sight of him makes her so, and her grip turns white on the edge of the nearest table as she informs him that _that rotund sidekick _of his, the one who lurks outside her balcony as they speak, will find the man they seek in the dungeons, and the heart to match in her vault. (_And as for you…get out._ Her words are pointed as arrows, but bent, broken, and they miss their mark as he sidesteps them with ease. _I need you out of my sight as of a decade ago. Get out!_)

So he does, because for a man with a code his mates are what come first, but that look on her face, the terror he saw there with just a touch of self-loathing, continues to haunt him long after he and John have hoisted Graham into the saddle and ridden off into the night. (The man is incoherent with gratitude, but Robin can't help but notice the way his friend's head keeps turning back toward the castle, back to her, and an unpleasant sensation grips at his heart, refuses to let go.)

And he knows it is treason, to defy his Queen, but damn him to hell he doesn't know how to stay away, and the next night he is the one who finds her instead, seated primly at her vanity; a vacant stare greets him from her reflection in the mirror, as though she has been waiting for him, as though she has been hoping against hope that she would be wrong. But _I am a man of my word, your majesty_ (a thief who has honor), he responds to the accusation in her eyes, and they are lighter today somehow, calmer but more cautious this time, and she stands, shrinks warily away as he approaches her, drawn to her, like a moth to the flame that bursts instinctively forth from her hand.

Yet he knows she won't hurt him, he doesn't know how but he does, and when he says as much she withdraws the fire to her chest, where it pulsates once, twice, and then no more, her hands curled into fists there as he takes another step forward, another, another. She's reminding him then, _I never accepted your deal _(you have no obligation to stay); and though it's meant as a challenge her shoulders brace for defeat, as he concedes with a nod, admits, _True_ (but—).

(Deal or no deal, he just can't stay away.)

Then he's close enough to feel the shuddering breath she draws in, desire bleeding through her liquid brown orbs, until they disappear beneath a long curtain of lashes as they flutter closed under the heat of his gaze. He presses further until his nose bumps hers, and any other man would have been incinerated for less than this, he's sure, but he's seen the way she keeps fixating on his arm, and he knows that at some point, somewhere, somehow, the woman in green must've revealed their fate to her too.

So it's all the more curious how she still shies back from him, cringing and tense as though she awaits some lethal blow, but if that's the end that destiny has dealt for her, then, it seems, she'll gladly let herself burn. And she doesn't push him away as he opens his mouth to hers, plants a heady kiss there, and now he's trembling too—she tastes like apples rinsed with rain, feels like a thunderstorm brewing in his arms. The moan that she lets slip out between one fervent press of their lips together after another intoxicates him, he's positively suffocating with the need to take her then, there, against the wall, her vanity, her bed too if there's time, however he can before she's extinguished like the daydream he's convinced she is.

And what is this woman doing to him, he wonders, with her mouth looking pink and thoroughly kissed, but her eyes squeezed shut so he can't read what's behind them, and her hands still clenched firmly to her chest (either because she'll destroy him if they're not, or drag him impossibly closer, it's hard for him to tell). Slowly, so as not to alarm her, he lifts his arms, drags his fingers over hers until they loosen and weave through his, and her breath catches at the contact, then quickens as he raises their joined hands to his mouth, presses a kiss there. Then to her knuckle, the knob of her wrist, along the inner flesh of her forearm and to the crook of her elbow, until she's sufficiently distracted for him to yank her by the hand, catch her fall with his chest.

He runs his nose along her hairline, lips ghosting across her forehead as his senses grow drunk off her scent, her skin, her everything. And then she finally speaks, _I'll ruin you_, husky and low, the words drawn from deep in her throat, and they are both a warning and a promise; but fate had already darkened his doorstep long ago, and perhaps she wasn't wrong to assume his happiness so irreparably damaged on her account, though now is neither the place, nor the time (and will it ever be the right time), for either to know for sure. Because if this is what ruin feels like, Robin decides, then he will suffer it willingly, over and over, as long as it is her hands, hers alone, that are responsible for his pain.

Yet despite all this, she is still the one who's terrified of him—almost fatally so, he's realizing now—and though he can't fathom why the thought of their intertwined fates would trouble her so, he lets his touch gentle as his palms cradle her face and his thumbs caress her cheeks. But the tenderness only seems to pain her more, roughness is what she wants from him, to feel used, so she can hate him properly for it, and he senses her fingers tense against his chest, as though deliberating whether to take control, to take him, and then discard him after, the way he's so hesitant to do with her. And perhaps she proves too strong to give in, or he is too strong to let her, for she is his weakness, this woman whose darkness sparks a light within the depths of his, and he longs to see her glow too.

And when he's buried himself between her legs, with his mouth roaming freely across the slender curve of her neck, his hands fisting into her hair as it tumbles down in glorious waves (like silk against his skin, slipping away from him as her head falls back, an _oh_ of ecstasy parting from the perfectly formed shape of her lips, and he is hopeless for her, lost in her), he sees it; he sees the flame that comes to life in her eyes as the rhythmic grind of his hips leaves her gasping, clenching exquisitely around him. And she is utterly exposed, in every way he never would have thought possible, the Evil Queen who has become just a woman (_just Regina_, she breathes into the hollow of his ear when he utters a strangled cry of _majesty_ followed by a prayer to the gods, _just—Regina_), in his arms.

.

.

.

He wakes with the sunlight streaming across his eyelids and the warmth of her palm over his steadily beating heart. Her fingers draw in, nails digging lightly into his skin, and he's no stranger to the stories of how the Queen acquires the treasures that fill her vault. But her hand seems to have second thoughts, stilling, resting there, and then she starts as he lifts up his arm, wraps a hand over hers and presses it there to his chest. Her breathing shallows, and then he's turning toward her, shifting off his back until she's nestled firmly up against his torso, her neck easily accessible for him to deposit a sleepy kiss there before resting his forehead to hers. She's rigid in his arms, the stark reality of the morning after seems to have robbed her of the abandon that drove her into his arms again and again in the dark of the night before, but he holds her stubbornly close, palms rubbing up and down her spine, until he feels the tension relax from her body as sleep overtakes it at last.

.

.

.

He watches Regina from where he leans against her balcony, the chill of the open air filtering pleasantly through his lungs even as it nips at his bare skin. She's a mirage in a cloud of pillows, the luxuriant fabric of her blankets draped tantalizingly over her breasts, her belly and below; but it's the beauty of her face that has Robin arrested by the sight of it, an open look of tranquility, of peace, uncovered by the vulnerability of sleep, that she's not likely to have known for some time, at least not while conscious of it. The thought brings a dull ache to his chest, and he has to turn away, face the calming sight of the forest, his home, beyond the horizon of the rising sun, before he grows too tempted to join her once more and disturb her from rest.

He hears the whisper of sheets against sheets as she wakes, and when he peers his head around the curtain draped across the threshold of her balcony she's gathered them around her front side, looking forlorn and furious with herself for it.

_Look who's finally woken up_, he smiles, and it startles her, draws her hooded gaze up to meet his, and the relief in her eyes shuts down a split second too late after he's seen it. His heart is aching for her again as he tells her lowly, _Come here_, and she does, rising from the bed, a goddess wrapped in linen as she floats to where he stands. It is a sin how stunning she looks, he thinks, drawing her close, one hand coming to rest in the small of her back, the other brushing her hair behind her ear to cup the side of her face. A sin, and a ruse how harmless, how delicate she appears to be as he pulls her in for a long, languid kiss, open-mouthed and divinely intimate, with the friction of tongue on tongue; but it's not a ruse, is it, not when she's this way with _him_—and maybe that's the thing she hates more than anything, he would have realized later, had later not proven to be too late.

She lets him kiss her one last time before her face schools itself into something hard and unreadable, and she turns away (her eyes have already revealed too much to him) as she extracts herself from his embrace, catching the bedsheets as they threaten to fall away from her body. Her words are just shy of cold but for the way they quiver at the end as she asks if he would care for something to drink. _Regina_, he starts, the sound of her name on his lips catching her off guard, she looks him fully in the eye and he is breathless from the despair he sees in them, but it's gone as quickly as it had appeared. She approaches him again, a calculated stride in her step now, and the glimmer of light that is Regina begins to flicker out with the smirk that's playing at her lips as she boldly takes his face into her hands.

She drags the front of her body against his, mouth teasing its way up his neck as he swallows audibly, takes in a ragged breath, and then, _Do have a drink with me before you go_, she's purring into his ear, trailing a hand down his bare chest before she pivots abruptly away from him. Her hips sway as she makes her way to her side table, begins daintily handling various bottles of all shapes, sizes, colored contents. Her back faces him as she works, preparing a drink for him, and he's struggling valiantly for a way to return her to him, to coax the woman he had seen, had foolishly taken to be his, out from under the glittering, impenetrable exterior of the Evil Queen once more.

And, like a fool, he dares to continue to hope as she saunters back to him, presses a small tumbler filled with an amber-colored liquid into his hand, and lifts her own up in a silent toast. But the wicked little smile that had been taunting him twitches and falls as he raises his drink to his lips, and it's too late as its contents touch his tongue; his head grows fuzzy and his knees make sudden impact with the ground, glass shattering all around him. He gasps her name as she crouches down, bracing the back of his neck with her hand as every muscle in his body loosens against his will and he collapses, bonelessly, in her arms. The last thing he registers is her lowering him tenderly to the floor, and her face, her beautiful, breathtaking face, twisted in torment, in mutiny, as she tells him she would sooner ruin him before he ever had the chance to do the same to her.

.

.

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Robin jerks to consciousness with a start, a pressure squeezing between his temples with unrelenting force. Gods, he can't recall a hangover this bad before, he thinks as he sits up with a groan, takes in his surroundings.

But—where the bloody hell—

Panic rising like a tidal wave now, he makes to stand, stumbling when his knees give out slightly. He braces himself against the edge of a table, and through the ornately gilded mirror appended to the wall above it he sees an elaborate four-poster bed, scattered with pillows of the richest quality, but torn clean of its sheets, which lie in a heap about a meter away from where he's swaying on his feet. And then his eyes fall upon the slim gold crown clutched in his right hand, its jewels glinting against the dark backdrop of the Locksley crest branded into his skin, and not only has he found his way into a strange woman's bedchambers, but a royal one's, to boot. With not a single intact memory of how he'd come to be there.

Spewing out a litany of curses, he tosses the crown aside as though burned by it, then grabs for the tunic he'd inexplicably discarded at some point in the night over the corner bedpost; he throws it on backwards in his haste to somehow make it out of there with his body still blessedly attached to his head. The mystery of what brand of idiocy had compelled him to sneak into the castle and steal from the Evil Queen will have to be a question for another time, he decides as he leaps over the balcony and onto the courtyard below, where his mare patiently awaits him with her reins tied to a marble post.

It's not until they've made it halfway to the edge of the woods when he happens a glance back to the castle; he thinks he sees a sliver of something move on the balcony, a dash of red, but it's gone when he turns around for a second look, and he can't be certain that what he saw there was real.


End file.
